Mobile App Tries to Find the Next Warren Buffett

The stock market may seem complicated if not rigged. But the fact is that many people have done quite well over the years.

So to make things easier — and increase the odds of success — there’s a new iOS app to help out. It’s called Robinhood.

For the most part, you can create a playlist of stocks and track the performance. You can then share your picks with your friends. Oh, and there are also helpful newsfeeds that are based on your portfolio.

In theory, you should be able to get a sense of who the real stock pickers are — those who probably need to do more homework!

At the core of Robinhood is a sophisticated Big Data back-end, which is based on lots of algorithms. Yes, the company’s co-founders, Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, are math whizzes and are graduates of Stanford (both got master’s degrees in math). They also have built technologies for institutional investors and investment banks.

“Robinhood is a great tool for surfacing the next generation of Warren Buffets,” said Vladimir. “Investors are constantly on the lookout for new information and ideas. Financial advisors, brokers, and investment research firms derive much of their edge from being gatekeepers of this information. With Robinhood, the aim is to make a transparent and free social platform for investing ideas, and give every investor equal access to this platform. This way, individuals gain access to a wide variety of opinions, and those who perform best are rewarded with more exposure and recognition.”

And how will Robinhood make money? According to Vladimir: “We hope to add a premium set of features at a later time.”

But perhaps the biggest opportunity is to turn Robinhood into a mobile/social version of E*TRADE (NASDAQ:ETFC) — that is, adding the ability to take trades. And yes, Robinhood is already in the process of getting the regulatory approval to pull this off.

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